Last truly white Christmas I had was in Florida. It killed all the palm trees and ruined the orange harvest.

As there were no gritters or snowplows available, the roads were chaos, especially as all the locals had absolutely no idea how to drive in those conditions. Despite the roads being strewn with wrecks they continue to believe that 'flooring the gas' in their V8 automatics was the way to go. Some cold, still, evenings you could stand outside the house and hear cars crashing into each other and trees etc, all over the island. Only the bodyshop owners were smiling.

I know the summer of 76 is suppose to be one of those anchor points in life, like knowing where you were when you heard about JFK / Lennon / Di / 911, but I missed it completely. I spent the whole summer climbing in the Alps where the weather and conditions were terrible. We arrives home all white and frost nipped, to be greeted with "boy, what a summer we've had! It's been red hot since the day you left" And in the days before mobile phones, internet, English papers published abroad, etc, it all came as a total shock. It was like arriving at a party just as the beer runs out.